The Center for Reproductive Rights is asking for our help. Gary Trudeau is a long time supporter of women’s rights, something he has never shied away from in the Doonesbury cartoon (think Lacey Davenport, Ginny Slade for President and Joanie Caucus). This week he tackles Texas’ anti-sonogram law and some papers have decided not to run it. Please check your local paper and email (see below) the Center for Reproductive Rights and let them know if it ran in your local paper or not.

The comic strip Doonesbury will be focusing on the anti-choice sonogram law in Texas this week. We’re told Gary Trudeau does a great job of using humor (depicting a “shaming room,” counseling by ridiculous anti-choice legislators, etc) to drive home how harmful the law is.

This is fantastic news, but it’s not the whole story.

Doonesbury’s syndicate, United Features, is giving papers that don’t want to run the strips a set of alternate cartoons. Trudeau made them the most boring strips he’s ever drawn, but we know many papers will choose to run them. Even though the real cartoons simply humanize the struggles of Texas women, many papers will call that “controversial.”

As a community, we need to support the papers choosing to run the real Doonesbury cartoons and call out those that hide behind the alternate strips. We hope you’ll let people know what’s happening in your local paper and encourage your readers/followers to do the same.

We also hope you’ll take a second to do 2 things: 1) Email us at action@reprorights.org and let us know which strip your paper ran, and 2) Ask readers and social media followers to do the same.

Addenda: This morning’s Washington Post has an interview with Trudeau where he talks about why, after all these years he is tackling this topic, “I thought reproductive rights was a settled issue. Who knew we had turned into a nation of sluts?” Yes indeed.

Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers, President Bob Brunjies removed the Doonesbury Forced Ultrasound comic strips from all of its newspapers saying he will reprint them together on its editorial page next Friday.
By doing so Brunjies compresses any reaction and reduces impact to a single day forcing this lifelong women’s health issue into a single days political discussion.

.Scripps is the leading A.M. newspaper in Indian River County,Martin County and St Lucie County.Scripps also has major reader bases in Palm Beach, Okeechobee and Brevard Counties.

This morning I spoke to the publisher of The Olympian, in Olympia, WA re this paper’s decision to not print the Doonesbury strip about the Texas law requirement for women seeking abortion. He said it did not comply to the paper’s standard of decency. Especially the graphic language of “the GOP raping women”. Then he said he also would not print Rush Limbaugh calling, “women such as myself, sluts”. Oh my. It seems that women today are being saved from themselves even when rescue is not requested or needed. BTW the paper is running the same pat Donnesbury strip everyday, Yep things are frozen in time in the comics this week in my little town on the left coast. I’m not happy about it.